Some of the best, most intelligent, motivated, and committed people are the backbone of the world's non-profit organizations. They put in hard hours to advance their goals, having some success, but often failing to produce the impact they desire.

These organizations generally lack funds. They need to concentrate their efforts on key leverage points and build working coalitions with similar-minded groups. Unfortunately, they often lack time for strategic reflection. As a result, scarce resources are often expended on activities that lack long-term impact.

The 47th annual conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) in 2003 examined reasons why well-meaning and committed people have difficulty building livable, democratic, life-enhancing communities on the planet. They did so under the theme "Constructing Agoras of the Global Village," and they identified four basic activities that would vastly improve the agora-building success rate:

· Provide methodology and facilities to continuously support the construction and sustainability of global agoras;
· Organize planetary networks;
· Identify stakeholders who may not identify themselves as stakeholders; and
· Link to an established entity that has the capacity to initiate agora construction activity (Hays and Michaelides, 2004).

The Institute for 21st Century Agoras is equipped to serve those needs. What it lacks are the funds that will enable it to aggressively "initiate agora construction activity." As specified in the attached budgets, $7 million over the next four years could establish 100 demonstration projects around the world with the potential to spreading agoras like wildfire.

21st Century Agoras exists to serve the design and efficiency of progressive non-profit organizations. It assists their efforts to construct livable communities on the planet. The organizations often lack significant funding. As a result they need to concentrate their efforts where they will have the greatest effect and they need to work in coalition with like-minded organizations. 21st Century Agoras helps these organizations locate their key leverage points and act on them in cooperation with other organizations.